1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of portals and portlets and more particularly to the synchronization of application data through a portal associated with one or more portlets.
2. Description of the Related Art
Distributing content about large computer communications networks is not without its challenges. In particular, the quantity of content available for distribution in a computer communications network often varies proportionally to the size of the computer communications network. At the extreme, the Internet hosts a vast quantity of content not easily accessible by most end-users. Portals represent a sensible solution to the problem of aggregating content through a channel paradigm in a single, network-addressable location. In consequence, portals have become the rage in content distribution.
Portlets are the visible active components included as part of portal pages. Similar to the graphical windows paradigm of windowing operating systems, each portlet in a portal occupies a portion of the portal page through which the portlet can display associated content from a portlet channel. Portlets are known to include both simple applications such as an electronic mail client, and also more complex applications such as forecasting output from a customer relationship management system. The prototypical portlet can be implemented as server-side scripts executed through a portal server.
From the end-user perspective, a portlet is a content channel or application to which the end-user can subscribe. By comparison, from the perspective of the content provider, a portlet is a means through which content can be distributed in a personalized manner to a subscribing end-user. Finally, from the point of view of the portal, a portlet merely is a component which can be rendered within the portal page. In any case, by providing one or more individually selectable and configurable portlets in a portal, portal providers can distribute content and applications through a unified interface in a personalized manner according to the preferences of the end-user.
Despite advances in portal and portlet rendering technologies, to date, portals and their associated portlets do not account for data synchronization. Data synchronization in conventional client-server computing relates to the synchronization of application data between server and client. Well-known examples of data synchronization can be identified within conventional document management systems and personal information managers. Still, in the context of applications and content delivered using portlet technology, data synchronization technology remains conspicuously absent. Thus, while a portlet application can display personalized content through a content browser, the portlet cannot transfer and synchronize data to an application client residing on the computing device of the end-user.